


My Three Fathers

by TheColorBlue



Category: Incredible Hulk - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Multiplicity/Plurality, domestic-family fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-16
Updated: 2012-08-16
Packaged: 2017-11-12 07:09:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/488101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little Skaar has three fathers, a mother from another planet, and an older brother who shares his body.</p><p>Or, a fluffy-domestic family of Hulks kind of story that takes elements from the Marvel comics (particularly Planet Hulk and Son of Banner/Hulk) and incorporates them into a stand-alone universe short. Apologies for the lack of Hiro-Kala (maybe?) but my knowledge about him is even sketchier than my knowledge of Skaar, so. </p><p>Assorted images of Skaar-Hulk father-son love can be found <a href="http://magickedteacup.tumblr.com/tagged/skaar">here</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Three Fathers

Skaar loves his mother. She is beautiful, strong, and kind. She is a warrior from another planet, or in her words “a retired killer,” but these days she does work with SWORD and also gardens and also cooks strange and exotic but delicious food that she always squints at and says, “Not exactly how I wanted it, but edible, I suppose.” His mother is teaching him how to harness the Old Power. She shows him how to feel the strength of the planet in the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. She tells him he needs to be careful though, and Skaar finishes by saying “because with great power comes great responsibility, right?” And his mother smiles, but also sighs, saying that their father needs to stop feeding him so many comic books. 

Skaar loves his father, both his fathers. He loves his father who wears glasses and ruffles Skaar’s hair and lets him burrow into his father’s too-big leather jacket. He also loves his father who is big and green and awkwardly (hilariously) never knows how to talk to anyone, but he lets Skaar climb onto his shoulders and carries him around in that way. 

Skaar is eleven-years-old. When he was ten, and some bad guys showed up at their house intent on carrying him off, someone else emerged in his body. The someone else called himself Skaar too, but this Skaar was sixteen-years-old, and huge, and tough, and apparently he killed someone, but little Skaar had looked away, horrified, so he knows this only from hearing about it. Their mother took big Skaar and talked to him fiercely about learning mercy and, more importantly, about protecting little Skaar, but big Skaar just sneered and acted like a big teenage jerk, even when green father shouted at him and threatened “to string the little punk up by his ankles.” 

At that point, little Skaar did the mental equivalent of kicking big Skaar in the shins and shouted _I’m not afraid of you, you big jerk!_

Big Skaar stopped yelling back at their father then. He blinked. Then he _guffawed_ at little Skaar, and then let little Skaar have the body back. Little Skaar could have puffed his chest out a bit then, because it felt kind of good to be respected like that, for once. 

Glasses father came out then too, and mother hugged little Skaar close and asked if he was all right. 

Glasses father muttered something about not being ready to deal with teenagers. 

\---

At some point, they started calling big Skaar “Conan” and little Skaar just “Skaar.” Conan complained and said it was all their glasses father’s fault, but the names stuck. Skaar was pretty pleased. (He was Skaar first, after all). 

Glasses father takes both of them out on weekends for milkshakes and comic books. Green father teaches Conan how to spar and takes long walks with Skaar on the beach.

Conan starts acting a little less like a jerk, and Skaar is mostly very happy, except sometimes when he isn’t, because he does things that he knows are cowardly and shameful. 

Mother calls glasses father “Bruce.” She calls green father “Holku.” There is a third father, who comes out more rarely, but Skaar is never sure about their third father because he doesn’t feel like a father. Glasses father and green father are smart and strong and Skaar looks up to them both with a fiercely almost worshipful feeling (Conan tells him that this will pass with puberty, but Skaar always tells him to shut up and Conan just laughs at him in response). Their third father is green, but he is… he is nothing like the other fathers. It’s strange, because sometimes Skaar sees third father with mother and he wants to say that this isn’t his father at all. Third father doesn’t talk like an adult should, he is kind of like a child but not really, and Skaar… doesn’t like it. It scares him a little.

\---

One day, Skaar is sitting in the yard behind the house, meditating on the Old Power, when he feels third father come out and sit beside him. Skaar doesn’t move. He pretends to still be meditating. Then third father reaches out, maybe just to rest his hand at Skaar’s back, but Skaar jumps up abruptly and runs away. He knows it is a cowardly move, but he doesn’t want to be around third father. (Conan chuckles at him and says that puberty must be setting in a last, and together they ought to join forces. Skaar ignores him. He is already flushed with shame at his own cowardice). 

Their mother finds Skaar in his bedroom, pretending to read. 

She sits down next to him. She says, “You need to respect your father. More importantly, you need to be kind to him.” 

“That wasn’t my father,” Skaar blurts out, before clapping his hands over his mouth. He looks up at his mother in a terror, and she looks back, her eyes shining black and cool blue. 

“Maybe not,” she says, to Skaar’s surprise. “But then again, maybe he is. Maybe you think you know everything about your family. Your father Bruce is a brilliant scientist. Your father Holku is a skilled warrior. Your father Hulk—I have heard stories of his deeds, and seen some of them. I have heard that he once leveled a city without killing a soul, and I believe this, now, to be true. He is like—what is that earth animal? He is like a bear. He is powerful and loves with all his heart. He would protect you with everything that he is. That is why I think he is your father too.”

Skaar is quiet, looking at his hands. 

His mother stands up, leaving him alone to think and stew in his own shame. 

\---

Third father is still in the yard, an hour later. For some reason, third father is watching the hummingbirds eating at the feeder. 

Skaar watches this from the door. He has never seen wild animals venture this close to his other fathers. There is something very still and peaceful about the green giant sitting in the grass. 

Mother has taught him to respect the forces of the planet. She has taught him how to breathe and focus on deep breath, slow like the cycles of heat beneath the planet’s crust. Everything about this earth is steady, and building, and evolving, and he needs to be quiet in his mind to hear it. 

Third father has heard him and turned to look. 

“Father,” Skaar says, “I’m sorry.” 

Third father has bowed his head. In a sad rumble, he says, “Hulk loves Skaar.” 

Skaar doesn’t know what to say, or what to do.

Then Skaar tells himself to be brave, braver than anything. He walks down the porch steps to third father. He comes very close, and then touches his forehead gently to third father’s enormous forearm. He doesn’t move away when third father folds him in an embrace, and he whispers in his mind, into the earth: _he hopes everything will be okay._

 _He hopes_.


End file.
